I wanted to get the communities take on this dilemma (in my opinion it is a dilemma)-

My goal is to always get my decklists down to 60-61 cards, however because of the inability to choose my lands distribution I often find myself kicking my decks up to 63-64-65 so that I can get an equal amount of lands (for dual colored decks). I am thinking that I would rather take a few extra cards and have a 12-11 land split versus a 60 card deck with a 9-12 land split that increases my chances of getting mana screwed. I am very curious how everyone deals with this? Thanks!

The frequency of a particular mana symbol in your deck will mostly determine your spread of basic lands. There is a bit of an error in the game where, due to the game's engine basically miscalculating those values due to how it counts Terramorphic Expanse and Evolving Wilds, those counts can get out of whack.

Fortunately, people on this forum have channeled the same sentiments to the producers, and manual control over mana bases will be highly likely in the next Duels release. Both proportion and overall number can definitely get out-of-balance for many builds, so this will be a great thing for the community.

knowing that nothing will change until the next DotP, any suggestions on deck builds? I'm still stuck on taking a bad land distribution with a 60 card deck or a better one with a less trim deck.

Its probably best if you name the decks that you want help with. Infact, its probably also best to post your decks in each topic for each particular deck for insight. Here is the link to all the main deck threads:

I think you are missunderstanding the point of my post. It has little to do with what is in the decks. There is a bug that can ruin your land distribution in DotP 2013. I'm wondering what people do to even it out, all I have been able to do is add more cards to my decks.

I think the game should offer anyone a free mulligan everytime you have less than 2 lands in your opening hand. Not just the first time. Either that or keep randomizing in code until it finds a hand with 2 lands in it, and then and only then show it to you. It's silly that you have to mulligan down to 5 or even 4 sometimes in order to get a 2 land hand. I know it's closer to real Magic, but let's face it. DOTP is an arcade version of the real thing, and there's no reason why you should deal with getting completely mana screwed from the beginning of the match. I don't feel good winning a match where my opponent got screwed, and often my opponent will tell me the same and offer a rematch if it happens to me.

Nothing worse, than sitting there with 2 lands, while your opponent puts down his 9th (with no fetch). Happened to me, and that's after mulliganing down to 6 just to get those 2 lands in starting hand.

Believe me, I've been forced to Mulligan way down just to get the second land, which is both statistically and hillariously interesting.

My favorite is when in one game you only see 2-3 lands in in 4 mulligans, then the very next game you top deck 6-7 lands....uggggg. I know it's all randomized, but you can't help yourself at shaking your fists at the developers just to make yourself feel better.

You know what I've got more issues. Whats up with the story in this game? The adverts said I was going to team up with Chandra and we were going to kick butt and chew bubblegum across the planes on a revenge campaign against some... guy she knew I guess? Who's Ramaz anyway? What do I get instead? I beat Chandra like 2 minutes in with a mono-green stompy thing Garruk gave me (why does he keep giving all these new planeswalkers his deck) and then I spent like 5 hours jumping from plane to plane picking up random nicknacks for her mantlepiece while she sits back back doing her nails or something. I was thrown in jail! I got hit by a Roil Storm twice! Do you know how many rats are on Ravnica, Chandra? All of them! All of the rats! All of the rats eating me!

Then we go kick her Ex's bearded-screaming-butt and what does she do to help? Nothing! She throws of the occasional fire ball and spends her time trying not to freeze to death. You should have worn pants Chandra. While we're on the subject what happened to your shoes? You had like Steelies on. Steelies are cool. Now your running around with stupid boots with like 5-inch heels? Thats not appropriate footware for Planeswalking! That's not appropriate footware for normal walking! At least Liliana is doing it for the whole 'evil is sexy' thing and can summon undead to carry her when she breaks her ankle. What are you going to do ride a Phoenix? Its made of fire! You'll fall right through! Man I should have gone Planeswalking with Liliana - yeah she'd crack my head open with a rock 5 minutes in and raise my corpse to serve her but at least we could have gone dancing!

We can only hope for Dop 14 that they will address this issue. All they need to do is fix their shuffle engine and stop having all 20+ mana on the bottom of top opf the deck. Also all decks should be able to unlock cards like Wayfarer's Bauble to get mana when you run into trouble. Better yet just put four of those in all DoP 2014 decks.

This has to be some kind of archaic coding issue because it happens a lot more with some decks than with others. Off the top of my head, Berserker Rage and Act of War seem to always give either no land, or all one color of land.

Funnily enough the one deck that seems to always give you the land you need is Mana Mastery.

I agree though, I know it's not how "real Magic" works but who cares, just make it so that you never have a starting hand with less than 2 lands. It would benefit everyone more or less equally and take a massive element of frustration out.

Plus there would still be lots of games where those 2 lands are the only ones you see for 9 turns.

It seems likely (to me at least) that they're going to have customized land distribution in 2014. When asked, the Devs gave that question, more than any other, more attention than their standard "we've heard, we'll see".

2013 is done so it is what it is. If they give us the option to choose which and how many lands we include in our decks then I would be fine with no supposed "fixing" in the shuffling at all ever. Make the shuffling as random as possible, and make a public declaration of it as such, so people can't bitch about it anymore.

It seems likely (to me at least) that they're going to have customized land distribution in 2014. When asked, the Devs gave that question, more than any other, more attention than their standard "we've heard, we'll see".

2013 is done so it is what it is. If they give us the option to choose which and how many lands we include in our decks then I would be fine with no supposed "fixing" in the shuffling at all ever. Make the shuffling as random as possible, and make a public declaration of it as such, so people can't bitch about it anymore.

The problem is the shuffling is extremely nonrandom and everyone has noticed this. When certain decks consistently deliver hands with 3-4 lands of one type and none of the other, and that persists across multiple games and mulligans, something is wrong.

Ever look at your deck when you crack Terramorphic Expanse? Lands are always clumped by type in a statistically very unlikely way.

There is bad code. I won't ever believe their shuffler is as close to random as possible until they actually just release the basic algorithm it uses.

On that note, I'd love to hear them actually comment on the leaderboard cheating. I can't think of any other console game where the leaderboards are so completely FUBAR.

It seems likely (to me at least) that they're going to have customized land distribution in 2014. When asked, the Devs gave that question, more than any other, more attention than their standard "we've heard, we'll see".

2013 is done so it is what it is. If they give us the option to choose which and how many lands we include in our decks then I would be fine with no supposed "fixing" in the shuffling at all ever. Make the shuffling as random as possible, and make a public declaration of it as such, so people can't bitch about it anymore.

The problem is the shuffling is extremely nonrandom and everyone has noticed this. When certain decks consistently deliver hands with 3-4 lands of one type and none of the other, and that persists across multiple games and mulligans, something is wrong.

Ever look at your deck when you crack Terramorphic Expanse? Lands are always clumped by type in a statistically very unlikely way.

There is bad code. I won't ever believe their shuffler is as close to random as possible until they actually just release the basic algorithm it uses.

On that note, I'd love to hear them actually comment on the leaderboard cheating. I can't think of any other console game where the leaderboards are so completely FUBAR.

At least in this game they just hack their score to trick the leaderboard. Lets take CoD for example; In Black Ops there are people on the top of the leaderboards that have a score of 0. Hundreds of them. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever played a game with leaderboards that wasn't hacked at some point in it's life cycle. Oh yeah, Pac-Man had leaderboards. I don't think I ever heard of anyone hacking Pac-Man's leaderboards.

You're a lose cannon.

"I played 70 card decks before it was cool to play 70 card decks." -Random M:tG hipster

On that note, I'd love to hear them actually comment on the leaderboard cheating. I can't think of any other console game where the leaderboards are so completely FUBAR.

At least in this game they just hack their score to trick the leaderboard. Lets take CoD for example; In Black Ops there are people on the top of the leaderboards that have a score of 0. Hundreds of them. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever played a game with leaderboards that wasn't hacked at some point in it's life cycle. Oh yeah, Pac-Man had leaderboards. I don't think I ever heard of anyone hacking Pac-Man's leaderboards.

You know what I've got more issues. Whats up with the story in this game? The adverts said I was going to team up with Chandra and we were going to kick butt and chew bubblegum across the planes on a revenge campaign against some... guy she knew I guess? Who's Ramaz anyway? What do I get instead? I beat Chandra like 2 minutes in with a mono-green stompy thing Garruk gave me (why does he keep giving all these new planeswalkers his deck) and then I spent like 5 hours jumping from plane to plane picking up random nicknacks for her mantlepiece while she sits back back doing her nails or something. I was thrown in jail! I got hit by a Roil Storm twice! Do you know how many rats are on Ravnica, Chandra? All of them! All of the rats! All of the rats eating me!

Then we go kick her Ex's bearded-screaming-butt and what does she do to help? Nothing! She throws of the occasional fire ball and spends her time trying not to freeze to death. You should have worn pants Chandra. While we're on the subject what happened to your shoes? You had like Steelies on. Steelies are cool. Now your running around with stupid boots with like 5-inch heels? Thats not appropriate footware for Planeswalking! That's not appropriate footware for normal walking! At least Liliana is doing it for the whole 'evil is sexy' thing and can summon undead to carry her when she breaks her ankle. What are you going to do ride a Phoenix? Its made of fire! You'll fall right through! Man I should have gone Planeswalking with Liliana - yeah she'd crack my head open with a rock 5 minutes in and raise my corpse to serve her but at least we could have gone dancing!

On that note, I'd love to hear them actually comment on the leaderboard cheating. I can't think of any other console game where the leaderboards are so completely FUBAR.

This is actually not that uncommon, many shooters' leaderboards are jam packed with boosters and cheaters.

I play a ton of NHL every year, leaderboards are chock full of either glitches or people that abuse the system in some way shape or form. If there's a leaderboard out there, somebody will do anything they can to get on top.

Just because I like the first strike and the explosive damage that can come out of it sometimes.

First night, before I started playing, on my way home from work, I kicked a homeless person begging for money. All night, I got landscrewed SO much. I swear, the crappy coders are in some pact deal with the Lord himself and punished me through manipulation of the shuffler. No where near random.

2 nights later, I helped a cat out of a tree. It purred and seemed to smile at me. When I got home, I went 90% winrate with AoW, never got landscrewed. This confirms my suspicions beyond a shadow of a doubt. The code is NOT random - it is tied into a divine power which can make it SEEM random to the untrained eye, but it really has a morally correcting subroutine.

Being positive about my results, I met the cat again in the same tree. I took it out of the tree, and gave it to the homeless guy instead of kicking him. He broke its neck and ate it. When I got home, once again, I got mostly good draws with a few landscrews. I mean, poor cat, but the guy was hungry. So the subroutine can clearly work out how big a % of moral correctness is needed.

So there you have it. It is not random, it is simply very advanced. Based on my scientific observations and about 40 games played with AoW in a space of a few days, we can now lay this myth to rest.

Sarchasm may have been applied to this post both on and in between the lines.